I’ve now been Abaco’s CEO for the past year. To be honest, we’ve accomplished so much that it feels like I have been in this role much longer.
Over this year, our customers have reminded me how important we are to them. I enjoy meeting customers. They’re at the heart of our business. They provide feedback that helps us do what we do even better. And they provide me with inspiration.
A case in point. On a recent visit, a customer and long-time friend said to me: “It’s good to have you back in the fight.”
That got me to thinking about why we do what we do. We – all of us – are in the fight. We may not be there in person – but when the men and women of our armed forces are there, they absolutely rely on us and what we do to help make them more effective and keep them safer.
If you take that idea of ‘service’ to the next stage: we serve those who serve. And: in order to do that, it’s our duty to be the best we can be – each day, every day. Our focus must always be, not only on our customers, but on our ‘end users’ – warfighters around the world – and how we can best serve them.
To illustrate what we mean, watch the video below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1F7Tokgagk
Culture of excellence
That’s why it’s imperative that we build a culture of excellence and I’m proud of what we have achieved in the last year. We have in place a new, highly experienced leadership team, and I see a company that is more focused on customer success, more committed to delivering results, and more collaborative.
We’re seeing the results of our efforts. The majority of the metrics I measure show substantial year over year improvement and we’re landing some significant design wins that are accelerating our growth.
Of course, we’re a work in progress. A culture of excellence demands a commitment to continuous improvement. To give you a single, concrete example, we’re doing better on RMA turnaround times, but it is still not where we want it to be. That’s why we have recently restructured our process and organization to improve in this critical area.
We’re building a competitive, profitable, growing business that has our customers at its heart and that justifies the faith and investment of our shareholders. Most importantly, though, is that we’re completely focused on delivering an advantage to our warfighters. That’s why we’re in business. It’s why we do what we do. It’s what makes what we do important.
